Building a Strong Culture and High-Performing Teams

At the time of recording this Startup Huddle episode, Tomas Sakal was the Director of Recruitment at Bloomreach. He is known for his expertise in talent acquisition and recruitment strategies. His approach to securing top talent emphasizes aligning with company culture and fostering a cohesive work environment. Known for his innovative insights into HR challenges, Tomas is a key figure in shaping effective talent management practices.

What does being the Director of Recruitment and Talent Acquisition mean?

We recruit new people across our geos as we have employees in the US, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and India. We have folks in these locations who help us recruit in-house, and we take care of the whole recruitment lifecycle. Everything from the initial planning and budgeting of the role to defining it, reaching out to candidates, conducting interviews, including the final culture interview, and ultimately giving the offer. For the onboarding, we hand it over to the people operations team, and, of course, all the systems and analytics around it. We also help out with productivity and employee engagement initiatives across the company.

How does the role of HR differ between startups and larger companies?

For smaller companies, what HR teams look for and what the HR team is focused on is recruitment and then working with the company's leadership to establish and keep reinforcing a strong sense of culture. So that there are enough high-quality members of the team who are passionate about the company. What's really important is that at that stage, especially in recruitment, it is not necessarily the hires' experience but their growth mindset and ability to cope with new situations. Now, as companies grow, what starts getting more important is how we work with all the employees we already have on board. That's where the topic of productivity comes in. It's not enough to have high-performing, engaged employees. It also needs to be continuously reevaluated whether the overall setup and the business model are productive enough.

How do you define company culture, and what key behaviors shape it at Bloomreach?

The definition of culture that I'm used to is a set of clearly defined behaviors. So the way we also talk about it during interviews is - how do people behave when no one's looking?

Our culture at Bloomreach revolves around this key promise, which we call the commitment culture. That means that Bloomreach is committed to making the time at Bloomreach for Bloomreachers the most impactful professional experience of their lives. And then, in turn, the employees are committed to making Bloomreach successful. That's the sort of handshake at the culture's core. When you dive one level deeper, we define culture through our five values. Truth, Own, We, Think, and No Drama. These five values are then further broken down into a total of 10 key behaviors. When you say "own," different people imagine different things, right? For a person coming from a smaller organization, own means everyone is doing everything, as that's what smaller teams are like. But then, if you're in a larger organization, "own" might mean everyone knows exactly what they're doing. Everyone is empowered by clearly defined goals and knows exactly what they should focus on. The key behaviors are public; we have them on our website. We talk about them during the interview process and have them implemented in our various tools and processes to ensure the culture is visible and reinforced.

Can company culture be systematically defined from the start, or is it primarily shaped by the first hires and evolving dynamics within the company?

This is a really difficult challenge. For example, the story of Bloomreach was that the basis of the culture was set in stone before the company even started, and it's been constant ever since. However, the key behaviors and the underlying specifics have evolved over time. Because, again, a smaller company needs something slightly different from what a larger one needs to succeed. Bloomreach's story is creating the notion of the commitment culture and the five values and sticking to that. Then, it looks at how those values are interpreted and understood over the years according to the company's current stage. This ensures that the values remain in line with what the company believes in and who they are. At the same time, they stay relevant to the behaviors needed for success.

What is important to remember here is that rocket science might not necessarily be in the definition of culture. However, rocket science is about the culture's implementation and how you live the culture. You put these amazing things on paper and put them up on walls, but then you don't use them every day. You don't pay attention to them regularly, and if someone in the early stages is thinking about how to get the culture right, it's more about having a good sort of sensible time to put it together and create something that makes sense. However, real energy and difficulty come with implementing and adhering to the culture.

How do you manage employees who don't align with the company culture?

People would say that if someone is a culture fit but lacks hard skills, they're more likely to want them at the company. Rather than the other way around - they have the hard skills but don't have the culture fit. That is the approach that we also have. So when we look for people, we have that space to look for someone with a growth mindset. They want to grow, and we want them to grow into the role.

In many cases, this is the approach that we take. Culture is so much more important than the current state of hard skills. Hard skills and soft skills can be coached and learned over time. People can grow into that. However, culture has a much longer timeline. So then when we, after someone joins and we see evidence that there actually has been a lack of culture fit, then we inevitably part ways with that employee, which is different from, you know, not having the right hard skills for that particular role, right? So, for us, culture is incredibly important, and we believe that when it is not there, there is no fit for working for the organization.

You mentioned the commitment culture and supporting employee growth in exchange for their contribution. How do you help employees grow and stay productive?

That's the million-dollar question. The key motivation for people to join a new role is to grow. Then, it's caring about the people around you and having a strong circle of people you care about in your workplace. The last would be trust in the company and the leadership. So, in this context, when we think about growth specifically, something that I'm proud of at Bloomreach is having rolled out a comprehensive career architecture framework, which is oriented around job levels. That enables us to help people grow in multiple ways.

There are four ways. The first one is vertical growth on the individual contributor ladder. That's where we have the exact descriptions of what it means to be at this level regarding behavior, skills, and capabilities and what it means to get to the next one. It is very similar in terms of managerial. However, it is also important to note that managerial positions are limited in number. So, that's why we also talk about how people can contribute meaningfully on the individual contributor ladder. Then it's growing horizontally in transferring between different teams and getting different skill sets. Finally, it's just increasing within your job level, within your role, and looking, for example, at a competency map for that job, for that level. Those are the four big ways, and then all of that growth is enabled by things like the coach, the personal development budget, courses, certifications, and books. These are tools to help people grow in this career architecture framework.

How should early-stage founders approach hiring their first key employees?

I wouldn't have direct experience with this, but generally, one of the ways to think about this in the very early stages is that you want someone who wakes up in the morning and goes to bed in the evening with thoughts about the customers that you're trying to serve and that particular vertical and industry. But when you think about the skill, it is also likely that initially, it is very hard for companies to afford someone who already has all the hard skills. So they would hire someone who already has some of the skills, but most importantly, they have a track record of having adapted to new environments, and they have a history of changing their ways of working in the past, which creates a great base of evidence for a growth mindset. If you think about all the different challenges that are awaiting a new company and the ever-growing landscape that company is going to go through, more than someone knowing a particular process, what you need is someone who can adapt to that new situation and come out on the other end with a new skill set. The folks who reflect on themselves and how they can change their ways of working are the ones who have a great starting point. So those are the types of people that I've seen being recruited for early-stage projects.

Have these handpicked highlights sparked your curiosity? You won't want to miss the full conversation with Tomas Sakal on our YouTube channel or your favorite platform. The episode dropped on December 12th, 2023.